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Should public officials use private email for government business?

Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton answers questions at a news conference at the United Nations on Tuesday. Clinton conceded that she should have used a government email to conduct business as secretary of state, saying her decision was simply a matter of “convenience.” (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

The budding scandal du jour surrounding former Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email account to conduct government business while she was Secretary of State is both troubling and disconcerting.

Disconcerting, in that it reminds of the alleged secretive way in which the Clinton White House conducted business. Troubling, in that it is the latest in a trend among high-ranking public officials showing a disdain or disregard toward transparency.

We must say here that it is not at all clear if Clinton violated any laws. But there may be violations associated with whether the personal emails were properly recorded and stored on a private server in her family’s home. Clinton, who has turned over 55,000 pages of emails, broke her silence Tuesday, conceding that she should have used a government email to conduct business as secretary of state, saying her decision was simply a matter of “convenience.”

Predictably, Clinton’s opponents have jumped at the chance to criticize her actions. There is a fair amount of hypocrisy for decidedly opaque politicians to attack Clinton for secrecy. Many Democratic and Republican officeholders have not been as forthcoming as possible with their own communications.

Former Florida governor and presidential hopeful Jeb Bush issued a statement on social media concerning the Clinton emails and called for transparency. However, like Clinton, Bush also used a private email account when he served in office. Bush, like Clinton, subsequently chose to release a large portion of those emails. Though in Bush’s case it took about seven years for this to occur.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott. (AP Photo/Tampa Bay Times, Scott Keeler)

Gov. Rick Scott also used a private email address system to discuss government business and fought a lawsuit for months that sought to disclose the emails. Scott waited until after his narrow reelection to produce emails from that account. The Tampa Bay Times reported that Scott’s chief of staff actually instructed employees to use personal emails and personal cell phones so that a barrier would exist when record requests were made.

The unfortunate reality is that transparency is a problem across the political spectrum. Officials of all political persuasions want to control the news and present only flattering pictures to the public.

Is the only solution is to make it unequivocally clear that private email addresses are illegal for conducting government business?

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